


To Forge a Sith

by CarelessHux (AraSigyrn)



Series: Qotsisajak (The Code of the Sith) [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU - Sith!Hux, Betrayal, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, Murder, Referenced Child Abuse, RotS-compliant, Sidious is a dick, Sith Code, The Dark Side of the Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25346020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/pseuds/CarelessHux
Summary: Rey wasn't the only contigency.The story of how Hux fell to the Dark.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Qotsisajak (The Code of the Sith) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835542
Comments: 13
Kudos: 65





	To Forge a Sith

> _There is no serenity,_

It starts with a boy, small and quiet, who lives in a crowded room. His mother is a worn and busy woman, worked to the very marrow of her bones by the unthinking army of uniformed masters who run the massive compound of the Academy. She is poor, uneducated and has no family to help her. She is pretty in the fragility of near starvation and overwork. She is weak.

The Commandant has a nose for weakness.

The boy, her son, is born an hour before dawn. He cries when she leaves him to prepare the breakfast. She weeps even as she works. 

The next day, she ties her son to her back and he does not cry, even when the steam scalds his cheek. 

She loves him with all the love that her poor battered heart can muster. The other servants love him too. They cannot be kind but they watch for him, teach him to walk and make him toys from scraps of cloth and metal discarded by the Academy. He is happy although he does not know the word. Does a fish need a word for water? He is loved and the poverty of the kitchens are all he knows.

His mother calls him "Seytanta" from the folk tales of Arkanis.

The voice that whispers in his dreams only calls him 'boy'. Seytanta does not like the voice but he does not understand much of what the voice promises. He does not know the words 'rule', 'dominion' and 'power' is what makes the oven work and the droids serve. He does not know what the voice wants but he cannot keep the voice from whispering. He wakes his mother some nights in his fight to escape the dreams.

She holds him tight and tells him that she will keep him safe. 

"Don't listen," she whispers in her turn. "The voices in the Dark lie. Never trust them. Never let them into your head." 

The voice that whispers laughs as she weeps. ' _You are made for better things than this, boy._ '

After his mother goes to back to sleep, the voice teaches Seytanta to extinguish and rekindle the candle on their windowsill. He can feel the flame, a bright thread in the tapestry of more complex patterns that the voice calls the Force. His mother is made of different threads, faded but strong. The building is made of threads that feel different again. The voice is made of Dark threads that chill his blood. Seytanta watches the flame flicker to life only to die again and again. 

' _The Light can only dispel the Dark for so long,_ ' the voice teaches him. ' _The Dark will overwhelm the Light. It is inevitable._ '

He is just old enough to be put to work when one of the uniformed figures that passes through the kitchens to make new demands of the staff sees his hair. Seytanta is grabbed by the arm, held up like a freshly butchered animal. His mother tries to save him but the uniformed man hauls him away. There are needles: Seytanta's blood in small tubes: more uniformed figures with droids that are sleek and silent: shouting and Seytanta's mother screaming on the other side of a locked door.

> _There is only passion,_

Seytanta becomes Armitage. Armitage Hux.

Armitage Hux has no mother, only a father. The Commandant's wife slaps him across the face the one and only time she acknowledges his existence. Her nails draw blood. Armitage does not hear what she says; the words are drowned out by the ringing in his ears. He knows that the Commandant shouts too. It is the Commandant's blow that drives him to the floor.

Armitage pushes himself up, blood dripping from his nose. 

He looks up at the Commandant and his wife. Both of them so much bigger than Armitage. He tastes the blood from his spilt lip. The part of him that is still Seytanta apologizes, promises to do better. The part that is already Armitage watches silently. The Commandant and his wife are bigger than he is.

So what? The whales are much bigger than the fishing vessel.

That night, not his first without Seytanta's mother, Armitage wakes with a scream. No sound escapes his open lips. His voice fails him as he tries again to call for help. The air that rushes from his lungs does not even squeak against his vocal cords. He cannot move; twisting as something sharp and hot carves into his back between his shoulder-blades. He tries to scream a third time. No sound.

When the pain stabs into him again, he clenches his teeth. He does not close his eyes. He reaches out and finds nothing but the other boys sleeping and a swirling nexus of Darkness around him. The pain burns and he bites down on nothing, tears in his eyes. He barely feels the shame of wetting himself when the pain sharpens again.

' _Good,_ ' the voice from his dreams whispers. ' _Feel your anger! Embrace it!_ '

When the pain vanishes, Armitage doesn't notice at first. He pants through his teeth, curled in on himself as tight as a furled anemone. The relief is dizzying; the sudden lull making his head spin. He hears the voice's laughter but it's just an echo. The Dark has receded like a cloud passing over the moon. Armitage is alone.

It seems to take hours to regain control over his shivering body. Armitage's legs won't support him when he tries to stand. Grimly he forces himself up on shaking arms. He crawls to the 'fresher, hard floor bruising his knees as he goes. His shirt sticks to his back, his wet pants leave a trail but he pushes himself onwards. It takes him almost a full minute to pull himself upright using the bare metal sink. There is a mirror on the wall behind him, a smaller one over the sink although none of the boys in the dormitory are old enough to shave.

Armitage stares at the red stain between his shoulderblades, half-hysterical with the reality of his injury. He manages to lock his knees on the second attempt, clawing to get the shirt off. His blood stinks like wet metal, his sweat is acrid enough to sear his nose but the shirt comes off. He stares into the mirror.

He doesn't know the symbol now carved into his back. He's never seen it in any of the files and databases; a jagged circle around a red disc. He can't remember ever seeing it before but there is something in the savage lines that resonates in his very bones. He stares until a gasp draws his eye to the boy standing at the door.

Vetten Dakrir is not the worst of the bullies. He is a large boy, blessed with genetics that add to his bulk even on the meagre diet afforded to cadets. He's too stupid to be a threat, mindlessly shuffling in the wake of his betters. 

The first day they met, Vetten had knocked Armitage into the mud to make the other boys laugh.

Armitage understands in this moment of eye contact that Vetten had wanted them to laugh at Armitage so they would not laugh at him. Vetten is no longer allowed to beat the boys that laugh. Vetten fears the instructors like a cur fears the lash. Armitage can feel that fear, like the candle flame in the draft.

Armitage reaches out and Vetten freezes, barely breathing. His heart is another candle flame, flickering in Armitage's grip. He feels the ache across his back. He knows that he could snuff Vetten out. The other boy's physical prowess is meaningless; he's powerless against Armitage. He can feel Vetten's fear, thicker now as it builds towards panic. Armitage presses the fear back and Vetten's expression blanks.

Oh.

He focuses; Vetten's mind is nothing like a candle flame but now that he's looking, Armitage can feel the thoughts and impulses that make up the busy chatter of the other boy's mind, every thread just there to be tugged on. He can touch those threads and reshape them. 

Armitage turns to face Vetten who is still frozen and slack-jawed. The bigger boy is not laughing now. Armitage balls up his shirt and drops it to the tiled floor. Vetten does not react. Armitage's wet pants stick to his legs, clammy and disgusting. He strips those off too and drops them to the floor. 

"Clean this up," Armitage orders. "All of it. Then, _forget_."

"I will clean this up," Vetten echoes. "I will forget." 

Armitage sees his own reflection over Vetten's shoulder. For a second, his eyes are golden.

> _Through passion..._

Arkanis is a backwater planet, unimportant to the war. Arkanis brings forth new officers who leave and never return. Arkanis has no importance in the effort against the Rebellion. Arkanis is loyally crushed under the Empire's boot but it is not free from rumours.

Armitage hears of the Death Star from his instructors. From their minds. The men (and they are all men) who teach in Academy are bitter old men with no other purpose to play. They are all unimportant but many of them still hunger for the greater Galaxy beyond and the politics that they were such failures at during their active duties. Such men brood and let their thoughts fester. They think so loudly that Armitage is still surprised that none of his fellows can hear them. Especially about the Death Star.

_Wasteful,_ Lieutenant Nass thinks as he teaches them basic navigation. 

_Glorious,_ Ensign Trellin imagines. His mental image is of fire, a world slowly cooked as its atmosphere is burnt away. Armitage only pays any attention because one of those Trellin visualizes burning is the Commandant. The voice sees the memory when it creeps into his dreams later that night and laughs.

' _Fools,_ ' the voice says contemptuously. ' _Little minds, incapable of even comprehending the glory of which they are a part. Learn what little they can teach you, my boy, but never forget that you are greater than them._ '

Armitage thinks of those words often as the days march on. The Commandant, forced by the public knowledge of Armitage's existence to acknowledge him, delights in piling humiliations on his unwanted son. Armitage can taste his hatred, practically see it when he is forced to be in the man's presence. He hates every second of it. He can never find any way to pass unremarked.

Maratelle is worse.

She never acknowledges him, never deigns to insult him directly but lets the poisonous words flow whenever he is in earshot. Her hate is like a strong corrosive but it makes her weak. Armitage can see her thoughts and feelings as he cannot see the Commandant's. He does nothing with this knowledge.

Trouble erupts around the Death Star. The voice in his dreams falls silent for weeks. Armitage keeps his ears and eyes open and says nothing. He is studying a biology text, half-asleep from the seasonal heat and dense humidity when he hears a different voice, deeper and softer in his head.

' _The Twi'lek physiology is more resistant to electrical disruption,_ ' the voice sounds like a teacher droid. ' _The salinity of their blood increases their resistence._ '

Armitage frowns. The voice doesn't seem to be talking to him so much as lecturing him. He props his chin on his hand and listens. The voice explains the biology better than Armitage's tutors do so he gathers the information to his chest. It costs him nothing but his attention. He has never considered the biology of other beings.

' _The effects of the Force can be magnified through precise application,_ ' the lecturing voice says and Armitage's attention sharpens. He has always learned better through practical application.

The second voice does not speak when the first returns. Armitage carefully hides the memories of it in the sentimental remmnants of Seytanta. The first voice is repulsed by sentiment. It does not seek information there. It — _he_?— prefers Armitage with the scar on his back that nobody else can see. Armitage listens as the voice rages against the Rebellion and tells him that it will be ash before he is grown.

He offers no opinion. He is silent. Armitage listens and he remembers.

When the Empire falls, the Commandant cracks like improperly tempered durasteel. His cruelty becomes sadisim as he attempts and fails to impose his will on a Galaxy that does not wish to be caged. The New Republic comes to Arkanis, held in orbit by the most desperate effort of the defenders.

Mercurial Swift, the bounty hunter, comes for the Commandant and his son. Maratelle is the afterthought, brought because her husband is unwilling to abandon her. Love, Armitage understands. Or what passes for it in a man as weak and bitter as the Commandant. Armitage says nothing. He follows the bounty hunter onto his ship and fastens his own belts as the bounty hunter prepares for a fast take-off. 

The Commandant handles his wife's straps, as is only proper. She is in the seat opposite Armitage. The Commandant is sitting to her left, barely wedged into his seat with his belly bursting from the straps. His attention is on the bounty hunter, the siege still raging beyond the viewports. Not on his wife. Not on his son.

Maratelle is a mix of anger at the loss of her comfortable life and an oily smugness that she is escaping Arkanis's doom. She cannot help herself though, lip curling as she looks across the aisle to the small boy firmly strapped into his seat. Her mind fills with that corrosive hate and half-formed plans to vent her anger on one who is weaker. Armitage could almost thank her. 

He lifts his head, meeting her gaze head on and Maratelle's head jerks in her shock at his defiance. Her expression shifts to fury when he smiles. The ship's engines are very noisy during take-off. Maratelle's strangled cry is lost in the roar. The Commandant is still looking out the viewport as her hand claws at her chest where her heart is shuddering instead of beating. The last thing she feels is the pressure, like a small thumb pressed against the valves of her heart.

The last thing Maratelle Hux sees is the flash of gold in her stepson's irises.

> _I gain strength._

"And this must be young Armitage," Grand Admiral Rax's tone is bouyant and cheerful.

The Commandant grunts, sneering down at the small boy with his hunched-in shoulders.

' _Gallius Rax is a loyal servant,_ ' the voice comes whispering. Armitage has never heard him with others around before. He peers up at the Admiral from under his fringe and notes the hardness in his eyes even as he smiles. He notices the brittle edge to the man's speech. The voice purrs in his mind. ' _Your instincts serve you well, my boy._ '

Armitage says nothing to the Grand Admiral in his splendid uniform. He is escorted away by white-armoured stormtroopers whose thoughts are narrow and shallow. He joins the other children, who are vicious and frightened because the adults are frightened. It is just the Academy all over again. Armitage is careful and vicious in his turn. He lets the other children believe him beaten and cowed. They all learn better, one by one.

He still has to fight occaisonally and inevitably, one of those fights draws attention.

Not from their tutors, useless old men who the Commandant selects. Attention from the Grand Admiral. Sloane, not Rax. She breaks up the fight, castigates the tutor and marches Armitage to the medical bay herself. She supervises the medical droid personally and Armitage is not sure what to expect.

"You have spirit," she announces after she dismisses the droid. "But you lack discipline." 

Armitage hunches his shoulders, mouth twisting. He's heard this talk a thousand times from the Commandant.

"You could have taken them all if you hadn't been so over-eager," the Grand Admiral says. "It's a waste of your obvious potential to behave so recklessly. The Empire needs your strength, Armitage Hux. You are not entitled to squander it." 

That is different and he looks up at her. Grand Admiral Sloane has her hands clasped behind her back, as if she is addressing a junior officer rather than a mere child. She studies him and nods thoughtfully.

"You have a great deal of potential, Armitage. I want you to develop it." 

"As you command, Grand Admiral." 

"Sloane," she corrects and pauses. "When we're in private. I will expect you to behave appropriately in public." 

"Yes, Admiral Sloane." The title slips from his lips and he braces for the blow.

Grand Admiral Sloane sighs but she doesn't strike him. "We will work on it." 

Armitage spends nearly a year waiting for Grand Admiral Sloane to slip and add a fresh layer of brutality to his existence. She never does. She teaches him, rewards his triumphs and analyzes his failures so he can learn. She is the one who formally inducts him into the Imperial ranks as an Ensign. It is the proudest moment of his life. Grand Admiral Sloane is the first person that Armitage Hux loves. He has no other word for it. The only comparable emotion he knows is what Seytanta felt for his mother. Seytanta's mother called it love so he does too.

The voice, the first voice from his dreams, becomes displeased with this.

' _Sentiment is weakness,_ ' he warns. ' _Others should love you but your love gives them power over you. They are nothing before you._ '

Armitage does not realize the danger until it is too late. Rax is always scheming and one of those schemes ends up with the Grand Admiral's death. Armitage never sees the danger though in retrospect, the signs were there. He inheirts several small things and a letter from the Grand Admiral which Armitage treasures. He does not sleep for the three days after her funeral. Rax loses a great deal of his operatives in those three days.

Armitage is assigned to oversee the improved Stormtrooper Program. His first battalion of stormtroopers are of inferior quality. The Commandant intends it as an insult. Armitage makes it a triumph of the program. Strong troopers and loyal beyond the metric of the Imperial standard. 

His first mission, the veterans assigned to him decide to have some sport with one of Armitage's recruits. There are too many witnesses for him to use the Force. Instead, Armitage flicks the blade from his sleeve and drives it into the larger trooper's kidney. The man howls like a barbarian. The recruit makes quick work of him. Armitage sweeps the other's feet from under him and the recruit, a ragged girl from a ruined world, hesitates.

Armitage raises an eyebrow and she shoots the man in the face.

He nods and the recruit salutes.

The matter is brought before an incandescent Commandant who can only fume as Armitage correctly cites regulations. The Commandant's fury drives him to strike Armitage across the face. Armitage takes the blow without reacting. His recruit holds her position but her rage is a crackling sensation through the Force. The Commandant's fury sours with fear. 

Armitage straightens his head and fixes the Commandant with blank eyes.

"Dismissed!" The Commandant blusters.

Armitage and his recruit salute in perfect unision, pivot and leave the room. Armitage looks at his recruit. He is expecting her to be intimidated by the Commandant's rage. Better and older troopers have faltered in the face of less. The recruit simply meets his eyes.

That is how he meets Phasma.

> _Through strength,_

The First Order rises from the ashes of the Empire. Armitage Hux rises through the ranks with even greater speed. He has no love for his peers and no superior left that he truly respects. The voice in the dark haunts his dreams nightly. Phasma, defiantly wearing the armour Armitage gifts to her, rises far beyond a mere trooper. Armitage becomes a Lieutenant, then a Captain and a Major very shortly after that.

The Commandant never strikes him again.

The old man withers, pickled in his resentment and bitterness at his betters. Armitage strikes only when he is sure that the Commandant has fully understood that he is, and always has been, a failure.

Phasma is more than eager to help. The beetle is barely known to the scientists of the new First Order. Armitage finds the information in old volumes, scanned and stored on old Imperial databases, guided by the other voice's soft whisper. Phasma has to do the work because the Commandant is intelligent enough to suspect everything Armitage does.

Armitage waits until the doctors finish filling the bacta tank. He has to be careful. The doctors's eyes slide right past him with the barest touch of the Force. The cameras will not be so easily fooled. He finds his vantage point, hands clasped behind his back. The Commandant is sluggish, sloppy from the fever and his eyes open slowly. Armitage allows a slow smile to curve his lips.

The Commandant dies before the medical staff can register the alarms that blare around them. 

Armitage Hux, now the only Hux remaining, leaves the medical bay. Phasma, now a newly-minted Captain, falls into step with him. They walk to the lifts together and Hux pauses just before the doors open.

"A shame to waste the bacta."

"A worthy cause," is all Phasma adds. 

Hux smirks at her before the door closes. Nothing more is ever said about the matter and the Commandant's tragic accident is quickly forgotten in the ascension of Supreme Leader Snoke.

> _I gain power_

Hux rises even faster with the Commandant's dead weight discarded. He becomes the youngest General in Imperial history. The old guard hate him but their fear is greater than their courage and they do nothing to draw his ire. The new officers, too young to remember the golden days of the Empire idolize him as an example of what they too can achieve.

He meets Supreme Leader Snoke for the first time, just before his final promotion. The creature is clearly not human. Hux notes this fact but says nothing that others might hear. He listens to the speech about the might of the eternal Empire, the corruption of the New Republic polluting the Galaxy and their collective obligation to correct the mistake of the Rebellion. 

The voice creeps into his dreams that night, urging him to heed Snoke and follow his direction. ' _He will make you powerful_ ,' it promises.

Hux snorts. ' _Does he know he's a puppet?_ '

The dark is silent for a long moment. Hux never sees anything in these dreams and he's long past fearing the darkness. The voice starts to laugh, a reedy cackle that echoes strangely. ' _Clever, clever boy!_ '

Hux says nothing to that.

' _He does not,_ ' the voice confirms. ' _Nor would he retain the information if you presented it to him._ '

' _Why would I tell him?_ ' Hux thinks back. 

' _Clever and insightful,_ ' the voice praises him. ' _Snoke exists to fulfil an important role. The old guard find comfort in his familiarity and it makes them ...pliable. They do not see as clearly as you do, my boy._ '

' _I will say nothing,_ ' Hux thinks. There would be no point. That Snoke is a puppet to Dark powers should be obvious to any thinking sentient. Hux has more pressing demands than to think for the fools who imagine themselves to be his peers.

' _Good,_ ' the voice purrs.

Hux gets his promotion two days later. A cycle after that, he meets Ren and the Knights who follow him. The man is a fool; style over substance. His mask and scars are just a costume and his Presence in the Force is barely more than a shadow. Hux nearly laughs in his face when the fool starts spouting off some tripe about the Dark. The only benefit he finds in the man is that the voice does not come to his dreams when the Knights are on the same ship.

The second voice, the one he thinks of as his teacher, haunts his dreams and proves much more useful. Hux learns a great deal from his teacher although he is very careful about putting these lessons into practice.

Ren figures out that Hux does not fear him more quickly than Hux expected. It sits under the man's scarred skin like a canker. Hux would have been more obvious if he'd known he could provoke Ren so. Snoke forbids the Knight from using the Force against Hux which leaves him with only his wits. Hux almost feels sorry for him but it is Ren who persists in fighting unarmed.

The newest Knight, barely more than a boy, does draw Hux's attention. The Force concentrates around him more than any other being Hux has ever encountered. The boy wears a mask that does nothing to hide his emotions. His body language is louder than any shout. Hux is intrigued despite himself.

When the boy kills Ren to claim his place as Master of the Knights of Ren, Hux expects there to be friction with the other Knights but Kylo Ren is imperious and fierce. His Knights yield to his dominance and bow to his will.

Hux does not.

Supreme Leader Snoke assigns them as co-commanders for the new flagship with a smirk that Hux itches to carve from the old fool's face with his monuclear knife.

> _Through power..._

Kylo Ren inspires no more fear in Hux than his unlamented predecessor did. It enrages the Knight but Hux is not afraid of his temper. He is so much more than the boy he was. Ren holds no terror for him.

Their arguments belie their efficiency as co-commanders.

Hux wonders idly how much they could accomplish if they could co-operate. He is never in the mood to concede even the barest ground. Kylo Ren never stops being furious that Hux refuses to simply do as he is told. Hux never bothers to leash his contempt for the fool who never thinks before he leaps.

At some point, Hux genuinely does not remember when, Ren started to abandon his helmet when they argued in private. He does not show his face to many others. In fact, Hux knows of no-one else but Leader Snoke who knows what is under the helmet. 

They are arguing in Hux's office one day, sealed away from the rest of the _Finalizer_ , when their dynamic shifts. Ren is raging over Hux's refusal to supply him with a battalion of stormtroopers to be squandered on his useless mission. Hux is coldly furious that Ren did not even consult him. They end up nose to nose as Hux refuses to give ground and Ren attempts to intimidate him by crowding into his personal space.

It is Ren who kisses him.

Shock opens Hux's mouth. Anger transmutes so easily into lust. Their first sexual encounter lasts only a couple of minutes and leaves them both sweaty and disheveled. Hux staggers backward to sit heavily into his chair. Ren, more dramatic, ends up on the floor. They stare at each other as they catch their breaths.

It is Hux who laughs, shaking his head.

Ren prickles immediately and Hux feels the clumsy intrusion of Ren's awareness into his own mind. He doesn't hide the amusement nor the fact that it isn't _Ren_ he's laughing at. Ren falters as Hux leans back into his seat.

"We could have been doing that for the last thirty cycles," Hux says.

Ren's smile is surprised and he laughs along with Hux. "Might have saved some of the consoles." 

The laughter is somehow more intimate than the sex. Hux has taken no lovers before Ren. He will take none after. The opportunity has been there; there are a great many junior officers willing to trade their bodies for favour or simply attention from their betters. It has never appealed to Hux who can read their intentions and desires from across the _Finalizer_ 's full length. He feels attraction but only Ren appeals enough to make Hux disregard the potential for disaster.

He does expect it to be forgotten, after they set themselves to rights and go their seperate ways. Snoke is fond of the Jedi tradition of denial and the severing of attachments. Kylo Ren is powerful but inexperienced and easily led. He will follow his Master's teaching, Hux thinks.

He does not expect Ren to show up at his door three days later, with the dust and blood of his latest mission still clinging to his robes. Hux has shed his gloves and his coat, still clad more than modestly. Ren crowds him back from the door, kissing him with urgent need. Hux doesn't even get the chance to say a word. 

Ren does prefer action to spoken word.

Their first time in a bed...well, it's probably not actually as spectacular as he thinks it is. They're both clumsy and inexperienced. They doesn't know what they're doing, chasing pleasure with more greed than finesse. They wreck the bed, winding up tangled together and too exhausted to move when sleep claims them.

Hux dreams...not of Darkness or voices. He dreams of a gentle yellow sun, lush green life and Ren's smile. He dreams of happiness beyond even Seytanta's faded memories. He dreams of love and a small island in the middle of cold grey sea. Small stone huts dot the steep cliffs and the Force sings through the very air. 

He wakes confused by the solid warmth wrapped around him. He thinks Ren is asleep until he moves and Ren's arms tighten around him.

"Ren?" Hux's voice croaks from his dry throat.

Ren's grip tightens. Hux senses nervousness? Trepedation? There is a connection between them, the threads of their being knotted in a way that Hux does not understand. A bond. "I want to do ...this. Again." 

"I'm not going to object," Hux says after a moment of silence.

Ren's embrace crushes his ribs but Hux is too busy being kissed to care.

> _I gain victory._

Hux settles into his relationship with Ren surprisingly easily. They still argue as fiercely as ever. The lower ranks, Phasma excepted as always, flee whenever they clash. Hux's focus is on _Starkiller_ , making Snoke's grandiose dreams into an engineering reality. He intends it as the weapon to win the war outright.

The Rebellion thrived because it could never be comprehensively destroyed. _Starkiller_ will kill the will to resist by the implicit threat of its mere existance.

Hux does not truly remember the Death Stars. He was a much-loved child, still sheltered by his mother during the theorizing and construction. He knows nothing of the effects of planetary death on a Force-user and there is no-one to warn him.

He treats _Starkiller_ as an exercise in engineering and logistics. It becomes a proof in itself of the First Order's potency. He builds the systems that supply the base and build it as efficently as possible. It is as much a statement as it is a weapon. This is what the First Order will bring to the Galaxy. This is why they will win.

Hux does not hate Hosnian Prime or any of the planets in the Hosnian system. They are weak and corrupt, he knows from the endless repetition of his elders. That is not what dooms them. They are the most suitable target for his weapon. Their destruction will mean less destruction overall. It is not hatred that drives his thinking. It is pragmatism.

Ren distracts himself with the endless hunt for Skywalker when Hux is too busy to indulge him. Ren may even believe it is his own will that drives him. Hux knows by now who Ren was supposed to have been. The last of the Skywalkers, the heir to Lord Vader. Hux has seen the tall lean figure that hovers miserably over the ruined helmet that Ren enshrines in his quarters. The ghost does not look at Hux twice but Hux finds his face in the records of the old Republic.

General Skywalker was something of an icon during the Clone Wars, after all.

Hux says nothing. The voice in his dreams is a less frequent visitor but he hears it all the same, whispering to Ren almost every moment he is not actively engaged in missions or training. Hux is not meant to hear this, he deduces, and this makes him cautious. He is reluctant to do anything to change the way things are.

He is happy.

Why would he change anything?

Ren's little misadventure with the Resistance pilot provides the perfect pretext to fire _Starkiller_. The First Order will emerge from the shadows to retake their rightful place. Snoke agrees and Hux makes the final preparations.

He stands before the legions of loyal troopers who have made this weapon possible and watches the sky sear red. He blames the faint fever on this proximity. Why would it be anything else?

A star is not considered to be alive by any scholar in the Galaxy.

He is no longer on the stage when doom falls on the planets of the Hosnian System. He is alone in his office. No-one is there to see when he falls to the floor. He has not been trained. The voices in his dreams have never taught him how to defend himself. He has none of the isolation that hyperspace would have given him. 

The agony of billions of sentient lives ended shatters the Force.

Hux shatters in his turn. 

So much pain. So much rage. So much _hate_.

The twisted cackle echoes in the void that he falls into. 

The Dark claims him.

> _There is no Light,_

Hux wakes an eternity later to the sound of his comm. He is on the floor of his office. He feels a wetness on his upper lip. He tastes blood. He does not immediately remember how to stand. His muscles respond without complaint but Hux's mind is ...wrong. His awareness feels too large for his body. It is profoundly disorienting.

He can feel power humming through him. He flexes his hand and feels the tremor through the very floor. He dismisses the sensation as he reaches for his comm. His comm buzzes with a secondary alert. 

"WARNING: MINOR SESMIC ACTIVITY DETECTED."

Wait. Hux closes his eyes and presses out along his awareness. He flexes his fingers again. Another tremor. Another alert.

Something has happened. Something has changed.

His comm buzzes again. Hux answers it reflexively. It is Lieutenant Mitaka, informing him that Lord Ren has failed to recover the map but he has acquired a prisoner. Hux acknowledges the information and orders a shuttle be readied to take him back to the _Finalizer_ as soon as she returns to _Starkiller_. He orders that no-one disturb him until then. Mitaka confirms and his comm goes quiet.

Hux eases himself into his chair and sets his hands on the desk. He is mildly surprised that they are not shaking. He feels a tingle against his skin. He lifts his hands clear of the desk. He barely has to concentrate to raise the desk to meet his hands. It costs him nothing to hold it there. His desk weighs 175 standard kilograms. One hundred and eighty two under _Starkiller_ 's higher gravity. It is possible to lift such a weight with the Force, he knows, but he's never lifted it before. Nothing close. He feels his pulse echoed back from the very stars overhead and it seems that the whole Galaxy is his to command.

Hux has never overindulged in drink. The taste of it on his breath stirs up vile memories of the Commandant. This is very close to what he understands drunkeness to be.

His euphoria is cut short by his comm sounding again. Ren is returning to the base with his prisoner. Ren has sent nothing to Hux personally. It is Unamo who alerts Hux to his co-commander's return. This is unusual. Hux learns that Ren's prisoner is a woman, barely more than a girl. Ren had ordered the cessation of the mission as soon as he recovered the girl, apparently believing that he could extract the information from her mind.

Hux frowns. Ren's skill at drawing out information is unparelleled but how are they supposed to use a memory? It seems wasteful when the droid was in their very grasp. He is offended that Ren did not consult with him.

This offense is what drives him from his office when he feels something...like a blaster flash in the Dark. He goes out into the base and the tide of thoughts/emotions/sensations nearly drowns his reason. Only a lifetime of training keeps him on his feet. He does lose some time, not long but enough that Ren has abandoned his interrogation before Hux reaches the interrogation suite. He hesitates, the barest resonance urging him to linger, but his temper kicks at Ren excluding him.

Hux chases Ren back to the audience chamber instead. He does not mince his words. If Ren will not listen to Hux, Hux will use Leader Snoke to drive the point home. He is so focused on Ren that he barely registers the tendrils of Darkness that wind around all three of them. Barely more than cobwebs, Hux never notices them shrivel away from his newly fiery Presence. Snoke's limited vision gives no warning of the change and Hux is playing at obedience to spite Ren.

Ren is too focused on the girl and her subsequent escape. Hux is ordering preparations to fire the weapon a second time when he feels a twinge of dread. His first thought is _Phasma_. The thought is not his; it is the Force warning him of his oldest ally's need and Hux leaves the command deck under a compulsion to believe he is still there. He finds Phasma, bruised and furious, in a waste chute and her warning comes too late to stop the Resistance's attack.

Hux hunts the traitor, more for Phasma than the Order. He is in the building when Ren confronts Han Solo. Ren's distress calls to him as loudly as Phasma's did but Hux holds back. He senses nothing in Solo that matches what Ren percieves. He can see Ren's perception, so strongly is he projecting into the Force and he can see the desperation in Solo. There is a third awareness, rotten and gleeful that pushes Ren forward.

When Solo falls, his last despairing cry echoes in Hux's ear and it is Seytanta's mother that he hears. He reaches out and the old man falls no further. He is still dying as the Force carries him to Hux's feet. Hux can see the light of his life as it gutters and the voice of his teacher comes whispering from the Dark. Solo's injury is a simple one. A mind that can build something like the _Starkiller_ is more than capable of seeing the damage and how to repair it.

He does not save Solo for Ren.

He does not even save him for the long-dead woman who had been just as powerless to save her son.

He saves Solo because the voice that whispers in his dreams and Ren's madness exults to think Han Solo dead.

Hux gives Solo into Phasma's care. The three troopers who accompany her are easily manipulated.

"Put him in a cell," Hux orders. "On the _Finalizer_. No cameras. No records." 

Phasma salutes and Hux is drawn away as the Resistance attack. He knows the blow to _Starkiller_ is mortal. He goes to report to Leader Snoke and is sent to find Ren. The fool has abandoned his tracker but that doesn't matter. Hux could find him if he were a Galaxy away. Hux orders the evacuation even as Phasma follows him out into the snow.

Ren is barely clinging to life when Hux reaches him. His mind is a messy tangle of grief, pain, and rage. His blood is pooled under him and he doesn't rouse when Hux calls his name. The blue-glowing figure by his side is leaking grief and despair almost as strongly as Ren. Hux curses and the ghost of Anakin Skywalker looks up. Hux kneels by Ren, ordering Phasma to call a shuttle.

_He's too late,_ Skywalker thinks. Maybe says? Hux can't tell the difference and he doesn't bother to try. _He should have brought a medic._

Hux nearly laughs. He has brought something more than a mere medic.

He does not need to pull off the glove from the hand he presses to Ren's heaving chest. It is a deep-buried impulse and Hux is too focused on the ruin that the girl and the traitor left. Ren's injuries are worse than his father's but Hux knows this body so much more intimately. The Force that floods through him and into Ren is powerful but tightly focused. Ren's visible injuries remain, not as bad perhaps, but all the internal damage is healed.

The healing pushes Ren into sleep. Only Phasma and the ghost are there to watch Hux lift Ren's body from the snow. 

_He's stronger than he looks,_ Skywalker says with frankly an insulting degree of surprise. 

The shuttle has a stretcher and Hux puts Ren on it. He combs the hair from Ren's face before he puts his glove back on. He feels _Starkiller_ 's destruction like flames against his skin. A deafening howl of grief and rage. The shuttle rocks in the shockwave before the _Finalizer_ 's hanger opens to recieve them. No-one mentions the pallor of Hux's face or how his hands shake.

> _There is only the Dark,_

Hux does not get a chance to speak to Ren. Snoke gives him command of the _Supremacy_ and orders to purge the last of the Resistance. Hux can barely focus. He is surrounded by so many people, all their thoughts and petty desires clamouring against the fringes of his mind. He is exhausted. His sleep is haunted by billions of voices instead of just two. He is barely functional.

Hux makes two mistakes; the first is in drawing out the destruction of the Resistance and the second is in allowing Ren space to brood.

The first costs him his victory.

The second costs him everything.

He does not come to the throne room first. Phasma is in more immediate danger, another ill-fated encounter with the traitor. He saves her, chases the fire away with only his will and winds too much of his power through her burned body to save her. He does not think Ren is in danger; he can feel the other's anger and Snoke's death reverberates through the First Order. He sends Phasma to find spare armour and goes to find Ren himself.

The throne room tells the story. Hux stares down at Snoke's bisected body for nearly a full minute, momentarily snagged by the trailing tapestry of the Force compulsion that controlled the old monster. It is that lingering compulsion that makes him reach for his blaster when Ren stirs. 

He has no-one but himself to blame for the farce of a conversation that follows.

Still, Hux might have forgiven him. Ren is an overgrown child in many ways. It would not be the first time Hux took the brunt of his ill-temper only to be rewarded with Ren's desperate repentence later. He was half-crazed by the residual effects of Snoke's manipulation himself. If it had just been that one abberation, Hux would have forgiven him.

He does not forgive the second attack.

When Ren goes charging out to fight the literal ghost of his past, Hux gets his feet under him. He does nothing to alter the minds of the witnesses. He simply watches, arms behind his back at parade rest until Ren is done.

Hux does wonder how Ren fails to see the bond between them; fails to even sense the power that he is drawing through Hux.

After the rest of their laughable triumph is done, Hux returns to the _Finalizer_ and to his prisoner, still sleeping in his cell. He considers killing the man. He imagines leaving the body in Ren's quarters but dismisses the thought as an idle fantasy. Killing Solo achieves nothing; Ren's little breakdown on _Starkiller_ proved that. Hux leaves him to live a little longer.

Phasma, now perfectly camoflagued in regular armour, elects to 'die'. She knows all because Hux trusts her. Unlike Ren, Phasma proves worthy of that trust. She urges the deception; Ren knew her as Hux's ally. If he knows she lives, he will eliminate her. The part of Hux that still believes Ren will come to his senses wants to believe otherwise but Hux is too weary of Ren's pettiness to take the chance.

He is already withdrawing. Ren barely noticed when Hux abandoned their shared quarters. He does not care when Hux ceases to involve him in the myriad message streams that maintain order in the vast complexity of the newly-forged Empire. He pays no attention to Hux's growing silence. Most damning of all, Ren has started to treat Hux as Snoke had seemed to. Humiliation appears to be Ren's aim whenever he thinks of his General.

Hux detaches by degrees. He can hear the sly voice now whispering in his lover's ear and he lays his plans for their recovery. He tells Ren nothing of these plans, hyperaware of the risk. The voice does not speak in Hux's dreams any longer. Hux recognizes the pattern. His final piece of evidence comes after the mission to Mustafar when the voice commands Ren to find the holocron that will bring him to it.

The flickering ghost that howls for Ren to run is all the proof Hux needs. Anakin Skywalker's distress is jarringly painful, stirring up the endless choruses that haunt Hux's nightmares.

Sheev Palpatine proves as resilient as the Force users who deposed him. 

Hux listens to the reedy preaching of a madman and every word chips away at the childish faith he once placed in the First Order. This is not what the Grand Admiral fought for. This is not what Hux devoted his life to. The Empire that Palpatine wants to rebuild is a dead thing, reanimated by his hatred and fit only to be burned. Hux keeps those thoughts very secret, waiting for the rebuttal from Ren that never comes.

With no other choice, Hux gathers his information and reaches out to the only remaining hope for the Galaxy.

It proves almost childishly simple. All the best intelligence officers are Hux's. The apparent loss of the _Finalizer_ removes most of the bureaucracy from Hux's working life. Ren's spiteful elevation of Enric Pryde frees even more of Hux's time and enables him to lay the groundwork for a mass mutiny. Phasma cultivates the troopers, alerting Hux to any potential leak. Unamo, now a minor officer on the _Steadfast_ , keeps him informed of Pryde's amateurish attempts to monitor him.

Pryde serves another purpose, a magnetic attraction of all the old Imperials who cannot think past the good old days. The younger, more dynamic officers flow towards Hux. He lays his plans slowly and carefully. The repairs to the _Finalizer_ pass unremarked under an anonymous line item in a three hundred page budget report. Captain Peavey, a surprising convert, fakes his own collapse to oversee the necessary preparations.

Ren, blind to everything but the girl, suspects nothing.

Hux has planned for nearly every eventuality when the girl shows up on Jakku. Ren and his Knights give chase and succeed in capturing the overgrown rug that kept Solo alive for several decades. Hux is put in something of a quandry. Palpatine wants the Wookie dead so his first impulse is to free the beast. On the other hand, there is no way to do so without potentially revealing his role.

Before he can resolve the problem, the Resistance do it for him. ...by creating an entirely new problem. 

Hux has no choice but to intervene when FN2187 and his allies are captured. They are the girl's closest allies. Losing them may cause her to fall into despair. If she falls into despair, she may submit to Ren and whatever shady enterprise Palpatine intends. Hux warns Phasma who assigns two of Pryde's troopers to him. Their deaths are simply moved up the timeline. He frees the Resistance while Ren postures for the girl and barely manages to supress his gleeful reaction to the news of their escape.

Pryde summons him back to the bridge to report before Hux's injuries (a trifling burn and some bruises) can be treated. Hux reports as the cowed and duitiful subordinate Pryde expects him to be.

He does not read Pryde's intention until the blaster is in the other man's hands.

Armitage Hux's last thought is a wordless cry of surprise.

> _And through the Dark-_

He falls into the Dark. A hundred voices shout his name, every one of them different. He falls into fire. A hundred million voices scream _Vengeance_.

He falls.

He is not afraid of the Dark. He is not even afraid of death. 

He stops falling.

He is standing in a dark room. He is not alone. A tall inhuman figure, cloaked and hooded stands by his shoulder. When he looks up at the figure, he sees golden eyes. The brand between his shoulders hums like a live wire. He looks around. The air is hot, thick with the smell of smoke and blood. He can see only flickers of movement, shadows moving in the Dark.

"Am I dead?" 

"No," the figure's breath hisses through the mask that covers the lower part of their face. "But you are not alive. This moment exists between the two." 

"Why am I here?"

"You must choose," the figure says and he feels a nagging sense of familiarity.

"I know you."

"You do," the figure might be smiling. He can't see enough of their face to tell for sure. "I have been offering you my guidance since you were a child." 

"The teacher." 

"Yes," the figure draws itself up. "I am only a memory, a voice from the Dark now but in life, I was a mighty Sith Lord." 

"What was your name?" 

"I was Darth Plagueius," the figure says. "My student, for my sins and the suffering of the Galaxy, was Darth Sidious." 

"Palpatine." 

Darth Plagueius nods. "He learned too much from me. I thought his greed could be contained. Directed. I was mistaken." 

He thinks of Sidious and his hands curl into fists. Rage boils up. He cannot remember feeling such fury. The room around them shudders and Darth Plagueius puts a hand on his shoulder.

"You have much rage. Much hatred. The power to burn the very Galaxy to ash." He can sense the honesty of the Sith's words, feel the other's admiration in his mind. "But unchecked power is worse than useless, a weapon in your enemy's hand rather than yours. Power is nothing without control." 

He knows those words. Grand Admiral Sloane had lived by them. Armitage Hux had adopted them, used them to fuel his rise to power. He breathes out. The floor cracks beneath them, dull red-orange light escaping to light the room. Darth Plagueius's hand tightens on his shoulder.

"We are born of duality," the Sith tells him. "An echo of the Force that births us. The Jedi blinded themselves to this simple fact, pledging themselves slavishly to the Light. You are of the Dark, my boy. You must find your equillibrium to survive." 

"I don't understand," he says but it is a lie. Darth Plagueius turns him to face two obsidian mirrors. 

He steps forward to look into the mirrors. At first, they both show nothing, only a smooth black void. As he stares into the mirror to his left, he sees flames rise, sees burned faces and feels a surge of anger/hatred so powerful that it rocks him backwards. The red of the flames is so bright it's almost white. A ravenous beast. _Starkiller_.

He looks to his right and sees himself as he was; General Armitage Hux, a picture of efficiency and cruelty, every hair in place. The First Order incarnate, for good or ill. He looks at his face and sees a stranger sneering back.

The mirrors gleam in the fiery light and vanish. He looks back at Darth Plagueius. "This is a dream?"

"A vision," the voice from in front of him is achingly familiar. He turns to face Grand Admiral Sloane, clad in the precise black uniform of the Order she never lived to see, with empty voids where her eyes should be. "A place of choosing. You can choose to let go, to die..."

"Or?"

"Or you live and you fight," the power wearing Rae Sloane's face lifts gloved hands in a shrug. "You embrace the Dark and the power that is your birthright and take revenge on Sidious and all his work." 

"Sidious is the Dark," he argues.

"He certainly believes he is," she laughs. "Sidious is...is a cancer. A growth that serves no purpose, achieves no gain and sickens the life that sustains it until both die. He has not heeded the Dark since long before his death."

"Why me?" 

"You are the Starkiller," she says simply. "Consecrated through the deaths of billions, born in the pyre of the old kyber mines. You are of the Dark in a way Sidious could never dream of." 

"Death?" he says thoughtfully as the floor cracks under his boots. "Or revenge?" 

"You must choose," she says as if there's any choice at all.

"Life," he answers. "Revenge on Sidious and all his works." 

Her smile is vicious and shows too many inhumanly sharp teeth. He feels the weight of his decision settle in his chest, a fire burning hotter than the blaster scar.

"Then wake," she says and the weight in his chest pulls him down into the fires, "and _remember_." 

He falls, breath driven from him as he lands hard on the polished marble of the bridge deck. His hand snaps out to balance himself and he tosses his head back, clearing the hair from his eyes just in time to see General Pryde's triumphant expression sour into horror. Mere seconds seem to have passed. He lifts his other hand, instinct driving him.

"You executed me," he says and hears his voice pitch a full octave lower than normal, sees the compulsion sink into the soft minds of those around him like a knife into exposed flesh. "You want to inform the Supreme Leader that you have discovered the traitor." 

"Inform the Supreme Leader that we discovered the traitor," Pryde repeats, smug expression replacing the horror.

"You want the body disposed of," he commands, "it makes the bridge untidy." 

"Dispose of that refuse," Pryde orders Unamo who takes a hesitant step forward. Her loyalty to Hux is at war with the compulsion. He can feel the itch in her trigger finger, the urge to see Pryde dead for his affront even as a part of her insists her General lives.

He catches her eye, peels the compulsion exposing a wire and sees the joy that floods her mind. She runs to help him up and he tightens his grip on the the minds around him, letting the compulsion sink like a stone in water, deep enough that not even Sidious can find it.

Unamo brings him to Phasma, who seizes him in a violent hug. She says nothing but they have never needed words. He hugs her back, grateful beyond words for her unquestioning loyalty. She is furious at Ren's betrayal. He has to hold her back from hunting him and Pryde both. He tells her of his plans. Phasma listens silently and nods once when he has finished.

"It will be done, sir."

Grateful, he leaves it in her hands and finds an empty cabin to watch as events unfold. He feels a morbid curiousity; the death throes of his affection for Ren insisting that he know how the Supreme Leader responded to his death. He feels a violent surge of rage and frustration that correlates with Hux's death and the girl's escape. Then...nothing.

He almost accesses the security footage for the bridge. A stupid self-indulgent impulse. He doesn't need to see Ren's face, assuming the fool isn't still wearing that abomination of a mask. He knew everything he needed to know the second Pryde shot him in the surety that Ren would reward him.

He waits instead for Ren to chase the girl to Endor of all places before he rises to his feet and marches down the corridors, following Pryde into the audience chamber just off from the bridge. It isn't so big or dark as the one aboard the _Finalizer_. His heart still skips a beat, a relic of his conditioning. He does not suppress the feeling nor make any effort to hide himself from the shrouded figure who flickers into being before Pryde.

He does feel Sidious's surprise, sees the flicker of disbelief. He folds his arms silently, keeps Pryde's attention twisted just enough that the older man doesn't register his presence. He says nothing as Sidious demands and is given Pryde's loyalty. He lets the man leave, mind as intact as Sidious left it, before he looks up.

Gold eyes meet gold eyes and Sidious's smile is twisted.

"My dear boy," the shrouded figure croons. "I did not expect to see you again." 

He does not reply in words but allows some of his rage and betrayal to seethe to the surface of his thoughts. Sidious's smile splits his face.

"Good, _good_. Let your hate flow through you! Feel the power of your anger!"

He lets his rage obscure his thoughts on that and the shriveled husk before him cackles.

"I will give you revenge," Sidious promises. "I will give you Kylo Ren-" 

"Ben Solo," he corrects. He can feel it, through the bond that Ren still doesn't know exists. He knows how to sever it but that last damnable gasp of hope won't allow him to do so. He justifies it as a way of keeping tabs on Ren. On Ben.

"Ah, I had such high hopes for him," Sidious steeples his fingers. "As much a disappointment as his grandfather was. He will follow the girl. She will bring him to me. Pryde will bring you to me. It is time to finish your training, General." 

He salutes silently and leaves the hologram of the once-Emperor cackling in his wake. He goes to the rooms that were Kylo Ren's, the only place he can be sure that he will not be disturbed. He looks around, sees the helmet twisted and still enshrined on its repaired pedestal. He shakes his head at it and turns as Phasma enters. He still is not accustomed to the bland white of her armour. She should be in chrome, he thinks and promises himself that he will remedy that when this is done.

> _-I am free._

Ren's mad dash to reach the girl would not be out of place in one of the puerile Republic holo-dramas. The General watches it unfold through the myriad of intelligence resources Sidious devotes to the man and from inside Ren's head. _Ben_ 's head. The man Hux loved never truly existed. The sooner he accepts that, the better for all of them.

He lets Ben draw strength through their bond, lean on it to overcome his limitations and watches with the same morbid curiousity that made him reach out after Pryde shot him.

' _I can do this,_ ' Ben thinks fiercely. ' _I won't fail this time._ '

The General thinks that his baffling fixation on pestering his way into the girl's affection must be a holdover from his time in the Republic. His own upbringing had been explicit on the dynamics of consent. He thinks back on Ren's relationship with Hux and wonders if the signs had always been there and he merely overlooked them.

The _Steadfast_ enters orbit around Exegol. Pryde is preening on the bridge. The General doesn't bother to join him. He can feel the ties that bind the Allegiant General, like black silk but stronger than durasteel. He doesn't need to see Pryde face-to-face to give the necessary orders. Unamo has been invaluable, identifying Pryde's most trusted bridge crew.

The General cracks their minds open like eggs, seeding his orders deep enough that no trace remains in their conscious minds. He sends them back to their duty, unaware of what he has done. Pryde is prickly in his arrogance. The officers of the Final Order are barely more than mannequins, with nothing left of their own will. When Pryde assumes command of the fleet and transfers to the _Reavent_ , there are the inevitable movements of personnel. Pryde puts his trusted crew in the most powerful places, wholly ignorant of the risk. He does not even notice the detachments of Stormtroopers who also scatter among the Final Order's ships.

The General claims the _Upsilion_ for his own but he does not descend to the planet. Not yet. Sidious is entirely focused on the girl; his second life and his victory over his upstart apprentice's bloodline. It is a distraction. The General takes full advantage.

He cannot save Kijimi. The Final Order is too blind to the risks. He feels its death and snarls wordlessly. The Dark is gathering around Exegol. He sees the Grand Admiral's face behind his eyelids and promises that this will be the last planet sacrificed to Sidious's corruption.

He decides to use the planet's death as camoflague. Silent as a shadow's fall, the General stalks the decks of the _Steadfast_. Phasma, still in her own disguise, follows him faithfully.

The Knights of Ren are gathered in Ren's abandoned quarters. He can sense the discord that divides them. Ben Solo's return has sown doubt among them. Sidious has no pressing need of them. They are adrift. They are frightened. They are as immature as either of their Masters and hide fear behind ferocity.

The General opens the locked door with a flick of his hand.

The Knights are on the brink of violence. They do not expect him. They are not wise enough to suspect the truth. 

It is Ap'lek Ren who tries to strike him.

The General makes no gesture and gives no sign. He sweeps the Knight's legs from under him, forcing him to his knees with a crushing use of the Force. Ap'lek's cry dies in his throat; the General's power coiled around his vocal cords. Ap'lek was the bravest. The others do not dare risk where he has failed.

Their wills are stronger than those of Pryde's flunkies. Still nothing in the face of the General's power.

He almost kills them. Not for the defiance but because he cannot see them massed together like this and not look for their missing leader. His hands tighten into fists. Their life-forces are a messy tangle. It would be so easy to tear them apart, barely more effort than a thought.

Phasma shifts her position. "General?" 

It would be folly. Sidious is too close to miss such a blatent act. The old relic is weak but he is wily too. Too many sentients have made the mistake of thinking Sidious was not watching. He... _they_ have come too far to be foiled by an outburst of temper. The General is a patient man. He relaxes his hands. "As the Dark wills." 

He does not expect the Knights to fall to their knees as soon as he releases them. Foolish. They are followers in need of a leader. Their training compels them to find a Master. The General almost refuses them. It is a risk.

It is also a petty act of spite to take Ren's closest confidants as his own.

He looks down at the twisted helmet that Sidious had used to manipulate Ren and scoffs. He looks back to find Trudgen Ren holding a very familiar 'sabre in open hands. The rage seething under his thoughts surges for a second. Ren really is dead. He lifts a hand and the 'sabre flies to it. He can feel the emotions that bleed from the crystal, the kyber singing in harmony with the power that runs through him. He looks at the helmet again.

"Put that in the shuttle with the prisoner," he tells the Knights and flicks his gaze up to catch the staring eyes of the ghost standing over it. "Maybe Ben Solo will listen to his grandfather now." 

He savours the shock that drops the phantom's jaw even as he turns away. The Knights scuttle to obey as Phasma follows him back out. They wait in the hanger until word comes of the X-wing's arrival. He boards the _Upsilion_ with two squads of troopers and the Knights trailing worshipfully behind. The _Upsilion_ blends into the gloom of Exegol and neither the girl nor Ben notice it.

He waits until he is sure that Sidious is entirely focused on the two valiant little Jedi before he lifts his head. Phasma needs only the slightest nod. She leads the troopers out. They swarm silently over the labratories, no blasters only sharp black plasteel blades. Sidious's rats die like vermin. One tries to run and he strangles the cry of warning as Sidious had strangled the cries of Armitage Hux years before. It takes no effort to rupture the chamber of the little rat's heart. Death is swift. He feels no particular hate for these little puppets. They are simply impediments to what must be done.

The girl's refusal is bright as a solar flare and Sidious calls to him. The troopers, neatly arranged in ranks, march ahead of him. He has the lightsabre that was Kylo Ren's in his hand. He toys with the hilt as the lift ascends. The air is thick with the power of Sidious's lightning and the smell of sweat and tears drowns out the dust and decay of Exegol's atmosphere. Sidious's disciples throng the space around the throne. They're all hollow puppets, nothing left of their individual spark of being and all their vitality channeled into the living corpse on the throne. 

Phasma leads the troopers into the space before the throne, each foot striking the ground in perfect unison. He feels an idle pride, hastily squashed. He has an act to perform, after all. He reaches out, lets the Dark wound through his very soul rise like a silent flood as Sidious cackles.

"Your Master should have instructed you in the ways of the Sith. As Darth Bane decreed, there must always be two."

The troopers are in place. The General steps forward, marching as if Grand Admiral Sloane herself is watching. The Knights echo back the shock and the horror Ben Solo broadcasts like an ion storm. He does not look at the Jedi, only at the Sith enthroned beyond them. Ren's sabre feels heavy as a Star Destroyer. The girl gasps. Or maybe that is Ben. He marches onward, stopping before the throne.

"Hux?" Ben reaches for him, stinging tendrils of Light that fizzle into the vastness of the Dark that surrounds him. 

He raises his gaze to meet wide, wet brown eyes. Ben flinches back from the gold and his voice cracks when he speaks again. "You-you're dead. You-Pryde killed you!"

The memory flashes briefly across the bond; Pryde's damnable smile, the empty tube that held only ash and two broken bodies — Lieutenants Rast and Kasty, he thinks — strewn on the decking.

"You mustn’t believe everything you are told, Kylo Ren." He turns his head to look back at Sidious who gloats over every word. "I must thank you for this gift."

"Fuck you!" Ben snarls and there's something of Kylo Ren's endless fury in the words. Enough to stir Hux's grief and therefore the General's rage.

"I had thought him unfit for our great purpose," Sidious's power folds around the General and he looks back at the throne. Sidious's focus is entirely on the two Jedi and his words are chosen to drive deep into their too-tender hearts. He seems to have forgotten the General can hear him. "His ...attachment to you divided his loyalties. He would have followed you back to the Light, or as close as he could have hoped to go, before you left him to the Allegiant General's tender mercies."

"No," Ben looks at the General, voice breaking. A shame he'd never cared so much for Hux before his 'death'. "I never-"

"Betrayal is the final tempering of a Sith," Sidious's power caresses the General's cheek, a casual display of ownership that makes the Dark boil around them both. "And such a betrayal as yours leaves him with only the Dark."

The girl attempts to break the deadlock, throwing herself forward. At the Emperor or the General? It isn't clear. It doesn't matter. Peavey could have bested her. Perhaps the fatigue has sapped her reason. The General knocks her to the ground, her lightsabre spinning across the uneven stone. Ben Solo, reckless as his parent, charges to her rescue. He has all of Ren's brashness but none of the Knight's power to back it up. The Light ultimately cannot dispell the Dark.

Ben gets a knee under him. The General sees that same knowledge dawn on him. Ben, desperate and seething with bruised pride, dares to reach for the Dark. The General's snarl is unthinking. His rage drives his will and some deep buried instinct turns that rage into a weapon. He snags those smouldering points that connect Ben to the Dark and snuffs them out like so many candles. The fresh surge of terror as Ben staggers back is savagely satisfying.

"Good, good!" Sidious smiles down at the shaken Jedi.

"I-the Dark..." Ben stares up and the General empties the emotion from his expression. "What did you do?"

"You are once more a puppet of the Light, cut off forever from the power of the Dark!"

"How-?" The General glances at the girl. There's a moment of resonance, almost kinship but Sidious is sitting taller in his throne, drawing the General back to the matter at hand.

"Now, it is time." Sidious's anticipation is ghoulish. "Strike them down, kill them both and complete your training, my boy."

The lightsabre in his hand seems to weigh nothing as he turns to face the Jedi. Neither of them armed. Naturally. Sidious's power is a cowardly, poisonous thing.

"There is no serenity," Sidious intones.

"There is only passion," the answer comes to him in Darth Plagueius's voice.

"Through passion..."

"I gain strength."

"Through strength," Sidious's puppets sway as his sense of triumph builds.

"I gain power." One step forward.

"Through power..."

"I gain victory." 

"There is no Light," Sidious spits the last word.

"There is only the Dark." Ren's lightsabre sputters to life. The General folds his power around and through the kyber crystal and the blade contracts into a single bloody line of light. "And through the Dark-"

He gathers himself. Sidious is already exulting. The Jedi are already beaten. Everything hinges on this moment.

"-I am free."

He rips Sidious from his support with a sweep of his hand. Before the old husk hits the ground, the General nods. The troopers raise their blasters. Sidious's guards and attendants die in a storm of blaster fire. The General's will is already reaching up and out to where Pryde is fighting off the Resistance's final desperate attack. Pryde's mind collapses in on itself, the man himself suddenly aware but powerless as his own hand touches the comm.

The _Finalizer_ leads the First Order fleet out of hyperspace. A durasteel noose around Exegol itself. The Final Order fleet, unprepared and defenceless, flounders as the officers seeded across every bridge go to work. In weapons and engineering bays, troopers open fire. Chaos erupts. The Final Order's triumph, so nearly a certainty, crumbles to ash.

Sidious's barking breath draws the General's focus back to his physical body. He opens his eyes, the fragile connection that binds him to Sidious incinerated in the fire of his rage. He can feel Darth Plagueius's Presence at his shoulder, other strangers adding their hate and fury to his own. Two strides close the distance and a single strike sends Sidious's head flying. 

The old monster isn't so easily destroyed of course. The air fills with spidery lightning, branching out through the shadow of Sidious's spirt. Frustration and fury fuel the dead man's attack. The General meets Sidious's gaze and does not flinch. Around them both, the Dark rises like a black tide around them. Sidious is strong in the ways of the Dark but his rage is little more than childish petulance. What does he know of loss and fury?

The General's rage ignites. The voices of billions martyred in the name of Sidious's petty greed howl for vengenance. The voices of the Sith who died to feed Sidious's ego snarl in his ears. His rage burns like the inferno at the heart of _Starkiller_ and it incinerates all that remains of Sidious. No finesse. No refinement. Only annilation.

The fire consumes even Sidious's barely-vacant flesh, the ash swirling away in the super-heated air of the chamber. The General barely notices. The fire of his rage boils higher and hotter, threatening to incinerate him just as it did Sidious. He closes his eyes. The fire is _Starkiller_ 's weapon but _Starkiller_ was more than just the fire. Like the icy shell of the planetary crust, his will encases his rage and forces it back down. His powers are the infrastructure, built to contain and direct the fires _as he chooses_. It seems to take forever but step by step, the fire recedes. Centimetre by centimetre, his control tightens.

He opens his eyes, almost surprised to see the motes of ash still spinning in the air before him. The General turns to face the empty throne. He feels a deep weariness and his bitterness tastes almost metallic. All of that for this? The urge to take the throne is fleeting; the last echoes of his conditioning. He could do it. He could take the Galaxy. The First Order is poised to destroy the Resistance and the Final Order both. 

Everything Armitage Hux ever dreamed of is his for the taking.

The General drives Ren's lightsabre through the throne, his power striking like a hammer blow. The throne shatters.

He is done dancing to the whims of dead men. He owes the Galaxy nothing. Let it rot. Let the newest iteration of the Republic devour itself. He is done with all of it. Phasma pulls off her helmet to meet his gaze. Then, very deliberately, she throws her helmet over the edge of the platform. Her silent support almost makes him smile.

"Hux?" Ben's voice breaks the moment.

His fury erupts as Ben reaches for him through the bond that still connects them. For the first time in nearly six years, the Jedi acknowledges the bond. The deluge of emotion is revolting. He had underestimated the other's self-delusion. Ben tries to project love. As if he knows the meaning of the word. The bond is unbalanced and twisting between them. Without any personal connection to the Dark, Ben can't draw any strength from him.

Still, there is a moment of weakness. A moment where he nearly gives in to the silent plea in those brown eyes. He's lived a lie before...

Hux might have surrendered. The General snaps the bond instead, turning away from both of the Jedi. "Get rid of them." 

KT1138 steps up, directing her fellows to seize the Jedi even as she collects their lightsabres. Phasma leaves the prisoners in her hands as the General extends his awareness back up to the battle overhead. It is already over, he knows. The Resistance and the Final Order just haven't caught up with reality yet. He can feel the fierce exultation from Peavey.

The Captain opens his mind at the first brush of the General's will. He reports almost total victory. Only Pryde's flagship, the _Reavent_ , still remains intact. The General withdraws and opens his eyes again. Phasma is standing at his shoulder, only a single squad of troopers remaining on the platform. Beyond the platform, there are only the dead, as anonymous in their shrouds as they were in life. He feels the whisper of their spirits, tempting him to set down his burdens and stay to die with the planet.

"Sir?" 

Phasma's voice recalls him to the present moment and he tucks the lightsabre into his belt. He doesn't think he'll use the weapon again; he senses that it's not his in a way that grates the more he uses it. He will have to construct his own. He's spoken the words. He can feel Darth Plagueius still lingering at the edges of his consciousness. He appears to be a Sith but he doesn't know the full extent of what that means. He will have to learn.

"Let's go," he says and Phasma salutes.

The Jedi and the prisoner are gone by the time he leaves the Temple. Lieutenants Unamo and Mitaka are waiting with the Knights of Ren on the ramp of the _Upsilion_. He acknowledges their salute as he ascends the ramp.

"All loyal personnel have evacuated to First Order ships," Unamo reports. 

"Signal Captains Peavey and Andata to lock onto the _Reavent_ ," he orders as he enters the cockpit. The pilot is already steering them up into the atmosphere. The General reaches out one last time. He allows Pryde to retain awareness of what is happening even as he directs the man's hands to the control for the main weapon. Automated alerts warn that the ship is too close. Pryde's terror claws away his reason. He fights to regain control but the General's will crushes him like the bug he is. Pryde's hand finds the button. 

The weapon fires. Exegol explodes.

The General releases Pryde completely, leaving him fully cognizant and aware even as the _Finalizer_ and the _Apex_ fire. The _Reavent_ explodes even as the expanding shockwave of Exegol's death engulfs it. The _Upsilion_ outpaces the shockwave, soaring into the hanger. The General turns to Phasma. 

"Order the Fleet to depart," he orders. "Let the Resistance lord over this ruin. We have a new order to establish."


End file.
